Finger Prints

THE palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are covered with two
totally distinct classes of marks. The most conspicuous are the creases or
folds of the skin which interest the followers of palmistry, but which are
no more significant to others than the creases in old clothes ; they show
the lines of most frequent flexure, and nothing more. The least conspicuous
marks, but the most numerous by far, are the so-called papillary ridges ;
they form the subject of the present book. If they had been only twice as
large as they are, they would have attracted general attention and been
commented on from the earliest times. Had Dean Swift known and thought of
them, when writing about the Brobdingnags, whom he constructs on a scale
twelve times as great as our own, he would certainly have made Gulliver
express horror at the ribbed fingers of the giants who handled him. The
ridges on their palms would have been as broad as the thongs of our
coach-whips.

Let no one despise the ridges on account of their smallness, for they are in
some respects the most important of all anthropological data. We shall see
that they form patterns, considerable in size and of a curious variety of
shape,, whose boundaries can be firmly outlined, and which are little worlds
in themselves. They have the unique merit of retaining all their
peculiarities unchanged throughout life, and afford in consequence an
incomparably surer criterion of identity than any other bodily feature. They
may be made to throw welcome light on some of the most interesting
biological questions of the day, such as heredity, symmetry, correlation,
and the nature of genera and species. A representation of their lineations
is easily secured in a self-recorded form, by inking the fingers in the way
that will be explained, and pressing them on paper. There is no prejudice to
be overcome in procuring these most trustworthy sign-manuals, no vanity to
be pacified, no untruths to be guarded against. -

My attention was first drawn to the ridges in 1888 when preparing a lecture
on Personal Identification for the Royal Institution, which had for its
principal object an account of the anthropometric method of Bertillon, then
newly introduced into the prison administration of France. Wishing to treat
the subject generally, and having a vague knowledge of the value sometimes
assigned to finger marks, I made inquiries, and was surprised to find, both
how much had been done, and how much there remained to do, before
establishing their theoretical value and practical utility.

Enough was then seen to show that the subject was of real importance, and I
resolved to investigate it; all the more so, as the modern processes of
photographic printing would enable the evidence of such results as might be
arrived at, to be presented to the reader on an enlarged and easily legible
form, and in a trustworthy shape. Those that are put forward in the
following pages, admit of considerable extension and improvement, and it is
only the fact that an account of them seems useful, which causes me to delay
no further before submitting what has thus far been attained, to the
criticism of others.